This year, we said goodbye to programmer Evan Morehouse, one of the hard-working team members who was critical to the success of the inaugural Greenwich International Film Festival. Evan now works at Broad Green Pictures, a feature film financing, production and distribution company founded by Gabriel and Daniel Hammond in 2014. Broad Green distributed I Smile Back (2015), a fan-favorite of last year’s festival.
What was the most positive experience you had at GIFF?
It was great to watch our team really come together and learn to work as a cohesive unit in order to present a really amazing, fun and unique experience to the people of Greenwich. A lot of the team were working on their first film festival ever, and it was super fun and encouraging to watch them all get into the festival groove and work hard to make the event special.
What was your biggest challenge as a programmer?
A lot of the challenge of being a programmer for a film festival is choosing a slate of films that not only reflects your personal tastes and the tastes of those running the festival, but catering to the specific tastes of the people living in the area where the festival is taking place. I’m not a native Greenwich resident, so it was a bit of a gamble trying to gauge what would play well in Greenwich. Is it an indie crowd? Would they be receptive to foreign films with subtitles? Are they just looking for films with big stars in them? Luckily, as it turns out, Greenwich is a pretty open-minded, cultured community, so most of our risks really paid off and we were able to expose residents to films they weren’t used to seeing in major cineplexes.
Did you have a favorite event/panel?
So many of our events turned out to be massive successes, and it was amazing to see big industry heavy-hitters so well received by the Greenwich audience. Our Changing Face of Television Panel was awesome–a really cool mix of actors, producers and television industry heavyweights that had a lot of fun talking about where they thought the TV industry would end up in the coming years. Opening Night was incredible–not only did we have Colin Hanks and his producer here for a great Q&A after the screening, our afterparty was truly a can’t-miss-it event of the Greenwich season. So much positive and encouraging feedback out of that night really put us in a great space to finish up the festival strong.
What have you been working on at Broad Green? Anything coming up?
So many exciting things to come for Broad Green Pictures! We just announced two really exciting projects last week that we’re producing–a film about the L.A. riots written by Oscar Winner John Ridley and an adaptation of Orphan Train, one of the most lauded novels of the past few years. We’ve also got three titles from one of the greatest directors of all time, Terrence Malick, on our slate for the next few years, all of which I’m really amped about. The company is just over a year old and things are moving really fast for us, so it’s a great place to work.
We wish Evan good luck on all future endeavors!
